Science on Religion Research News

Education’s effect on religion

Reliable information can be hard to come by. Ask an atheist about education’s effect on religion, and the atheist, reflecting on personal experience, will likely say education hurts religious belief. Yet, ask a believer the same thing, and one will likely hear the opposite answer. Fortunately, science can intervene. Specifically, Yoav Ganzach (Tel Aviv University, Israel) and colleagues found that for those with a strong religious background, education boosts religious belief, but for those with a secular background education hurts it.

Education not the key to increasing evolution’s acceptance

Despite strong concensus from the scientific community, the American public’s acceptance of evolution has not significantly changed in over 50 years. In that time, many new discoveries and popular books have furthered the case for evolution, yet an unignorable number of people remain unconvinced. Scientists often say that education will solve the problem. While education may have convinced them to accept evolution, sociologist Joseph Baker (East Tennessee State University) has statistical evidence that education will not solve the problem—Americans who disagree with evolution don't disagree with it because they're uneducated, but because of how they interpret the Bible.

Religion vs. spirituality in Germany and the US

The concepts “spirituality” and “religion” have exceptionally vague meanings, yet purport to cover something universal. That is, these terms should be able to describe something found across cultures, but their definitions seem too imprecise to have any real significance. While seeing how people from across the world understand the terms “religion” and “spirituality” remains a grand task, researchers from the US and Germany have collaborated to see the differences between how Americans and Germans use these terms.

Believers in religion and the paranormal prone to facial illusions

Humans have an unusual capacity for detecting faces where none exist. Looking at the clouds or a tree or even a rock can lead someone to imagine a face. Some Christians believe to have seen Jesus appear on a piece of toast and Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich. While this is obviously not mainstream Christianity, it does make one wonder whether religious believers tend to see such things when nonreligious people would not. Investigating this matter, psychologist Tapani Riekki (University of Helsinki, Finland) and colleagues found that religious and paranormal believers are indeed more vulnerable to facial illusions.

Group identity and ideological passion

Everyone needs a sense of belonging. Somewhere there must exist a group where one feels at home. For many, this group consists of a religious community, although countless other groups could be named. Regardless, groups matter because they contribute to a person’s own self-identity, and consequently people become attached to their groups. In fact, they become passionate about them! Psychologists Blanka Rip and colleagues (University of Quebec) wonder why people become passionate about their group in extremist ways. They found that people who identify with their group in a psychologically healthy way tend towards harmonious ideological passion whereas those who identify with their group in an unhealthy way tend towards obsessive ideological passion.

Science and religion conflict in the unconscious

The conflict between science and religion seems ubiquitous. Just recently Bill Nye, “The Science Guy,” and Ken Ham debated the origins of life: Nye argued for evolution while Ham for intelligent design. While on the surface that matter seems to be one of evidence, philosophy, and reasoning, something subtler may be at work. Psychologists Jesse Preston (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Nicholas Epley (University of Chicago) recently found that religion and science conflict in people’s minds at an unconscious level.

Fixing Western psychology of religion

Psychologists of religion want to study religion using the highest standards of empirical science. They gather data, they crunch numbers, and they run fancy statistical analyses in order to draw statistically significant conclusions. But when it’s all said and done, is anything like religion still the object of study? Psychologists Brent Slife and Jeffrey Reber (both of Brigham Young University) doubt it. They argue that the reductionism in psychology of religion often leads to a mismatch between what is supposed to be studied and what is actually studied.

Religious songs help to ease stress

The sad reality is that stress happens. Everyone knows this. What everyone does not know is how to handle stress. Some turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms, others to ineffective techniques, but most want to be a part of the few who find and practice ways that actually work at reducing stress and coping with the curveballs life throws at them. One such common way is singing religious songs. Medical expert Jill Hamilton (University of North Carolina) and colleagues took special interest in African Americans’ use of singing religious songs as a way to alleviate stress.

Working towards a Chinese psychology of religion

Psychology of religion has become a fairly common and well-respected field of study, with a rich history featuring geniuses such as William James and Sigmund Freud. In the West, one cannot study religion without encountering psychology of religion. But therein lies the problem: in the West. Other nations without the West’s history have not focused on psychology of religion in the same way. Psychologists Yongsheng Chen and Xiaojuan Chen (both of Zhejiang Normal University, China) suggest ways of constructing a psychology of religion in China.

“God image” and diversity

All too often, it seems that researchers use the word “God” to refer to something clearly defined and universal in meaning. Regardless of age, culture, or upbringing, researchers expect their participants to answer their survey questions about God in the same way. Not surprisingly, some researchers, such as Louis Hoffman (Saybrook University) promote circumspection. Hoffman argues that scientific treatments of “God image” need to account for diversity across age and cultures.

Review: Atheist Delusions

David Bentley Hart’s Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies has a most unfortunate title, and one not of the author’s making (the subtitle is Hart’s original title). Anyone expecting Hart to go toe-to-toe with Dawkins or Hitchens will be disappointed because (although he touches briefly upon them) they are, to put it bluntly, beneath him. He easily and casually dismisses them in the first few chapters in order to set up his main task: understanding the revolution Hart claims Christianity brought to the West.

Newsflash

New religion surveys online

Check out ExploringMyReligion.org, a website filled with fascinating, research-grounded surveys about religion, morality, and belief. Sign up to get incisive feedback about your religious motivations and inner life – and help researchers learn more about science, religion, and culture in the process.